# Word Counter

> A word counter reports the number of words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in a piece of text, plus its estimated reading time. Everything is counted in your browser as you type, so nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.

Source: https://rankcert.com/tools/word-counter
Free, no signup. Updated: 2026-08-29

## How to use it

1. Paste or type your text.
2. Counts update as you type - nothing is uploaded.
3. Check the readability score before you publish.

## Questions

### How is reading time calculated?

At 225 words per minute, the average adult silent reading speed for non-technical prose. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, the usual presentation pace.

### Does my text get stored?

No. Everything is counted in JavaScript on this page. There is no network request, which is why it keeps working offline.

### How long should a blog post be?

Long enough to answer the question completely. In practice, pages ranking for competitive terms tend to run 1,200 to 2,000 words - not because length ranks, but because complete answers are long.

### What counts as a word?

Any run of non-whitespace characters. Hyphenated compounds count as one, which matches how most editors and word processors count.

### How many words is a typical page of writing?

About 250 double-spaced or 500 single-spaced in 12pt. A 2,000-word article is roughly eight double-spaced pages.

### Does character count include spaces?

Both figures are shown. Social platforms count characters with spaces - X allows 280, a meta description should stay under about 160.

### How many words should an essay or article be?

Whatever fully answers the question. For search, the pages ranking for a query are the honest benchmark: match their depth rather than a word target.

### Can I count words offline?

Yes - once this page has loaded it needs no network. The counting runs entirely in JavaScript on your device.

## Related tools

- [Reading Time Calculator](https://rankcert.com/tools/reading-time): Estimate how long your article takes to read and to speak aloud, so you can put an honest number at the top of the page.
- [Keyword Density Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/keyword-density): See which words your content actually repeats and at what percentage, with stop words excluded, so you can spot keyword stuffing before publishing.
- [Readability Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/readability-checker): Score your writing on Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG and Coleman-Liau at once, and see which one your text fails.
- [Flesch Reading Ease Calculator](https://rankcert.com/tools/flesch-reading-ease-calculator): Score any text on the Flesch Reading Ease scale from 0 to 100, see the audience it reads for, and get the sentence length and syllable numbers behind the score.
- [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Calculator](https://rankcert.com/tools/flesch-kincaid-grade-level-calculator): Get the US school grade level any text is written for, using the Flesch-Kincaid formula, plus the sentence length and syllable numbers behind the result.
- [Gunning Fog Index Calculator](https://rankcert.com/tools/gunning-fog-index-calculator): Calculate the Gunning Fog index of any text, see how many of your words are complex, and find out the years of education a reader needs to follow it.